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LINCOLN 

IN THE WINTER 
OF 1860-61 

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BY WALLACE McCAMANT 



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Lincoln in the 
Winter of '60-61 



rAn address by Justice Wallace 
McCamant of the Supreme 
Court of Oregon to the joint 
session of the Twenty-ninth 
Legislature of Oregon on 
February twelfth, nineteen 
hundred seventeen 

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Lincoln in the Winter of 1860-61 

Mr. President, Mr. Speaker, Members of the Legislature, and Fellow 
Citizens : 

I am grateful for the compliment you have paid me in your 
invitation to be present on this occasion, and especially to you, 
Mr. President, for your highly flattering introduction. With the 
many things which are pressing upon you for attention I would not 
be justified in taking the time necessary to review even superficially 
the public career of the great man whose birthday we are celebrating. 
I think we may most profitably expend the time at our disposal by 
confining ourselves to a single chapter in his life history, the chapter 
which best illustrates his qualities of head and heart to be emulated 
by the public men of our day ; I refer to the four months intervening 
between his election and his inauguration as President. 

For thirty years prior to 1S60 the country had heard threats of 
secession. Threats oft repeated eventually cease to alarm, and 
thus it happened that hundreils of thousands of electors voted for 
Mr. Lincoln in 1S60 in the belief that the threats of disunion, which 
welled up from the South, were pure bluster. These men were 
speedily disillusioned. The South Carolina legislature was in session 
when the presidential election was held. Election day in 1860 
came on the sixth of November. On the fifth of November, Governor 
Gist sent a message to the South Carolina legislature, recommending 
that in the event of Lincoln's election, legislation should be enactetl 
providing for the holding of a convention to consider the wisdom 
of severing the relations which united South Carolina with the other 
states. A law to that effect was enacted on the tenth of November. 
It provided for an election in the several electoral districts of the 
state on the sixth of December. Such was the unanimity of public 
sentiment in South Carolina that no Union candidate ran for delegate 
in any electoral district. The convention was composed unanimouslj' 
of secessionists. It convened on the seventeenth of December and 
adopted the ordinance of secession on the twentieth. 

By this time it became apparent that the secession movement 
was tremendously strong in the other cotton states. Mississippi 
seceded on the ninth of January ; Florida and Alabama on the 
eleventh ; Georgia on the nineteenth ; Louisiana on the twentieth ; 
and Texas followed on the first of February. These events pro- 
foundly influenced the trend of public oi)inion in the North. 

Mr. Lincoln had been elected on a platform which demanded 
the exclusion of slavery from all the territories. On that platform 
he had carried all of the Northern states, and in all of these states, 



Page Three 



except New Jersey, California and Oregon, Lincoln's vote exceeded 
the vote of the coml lined opposition. Notwithstanding this clear 
expression of the popular will many propositions were brought 
forward for a compromise of the differences between the sections, 
and all of these propositions for compromise involved a surrender of 
the free soil principle. The most notalile of them was that proposed 
by John J. Crittenden, United States Senator from Kentucky. He 
proposed an amendment to the Federal Constitution recognizing 
slavery and assuring to it permanently all territory south of latitude 
36 deg., 30 min. In his message to C'ongress on tlie first Monday 
of December. 1S60, President Buchanan aunounce<l that there was 
no power under the Constitution to compel a sovereign state to 
remain in the Union against its will. 

All over the North public opinion fell into a panic. Boston was the 
citadel of the anti-slaverj' movement. A meeting was called in this 
city by the abolitionists on the third of December, to commemorate 
the first anniversary of the execution of John Brown. The meeting 
was stormed by a mob and resolutions were passed denouncing the 
abolitionists. On the sixteenth of December a meeting was called 
to denounce the action of the mob. Wendell Phillips spoke at this 
meeting, but so threatening was the attitude of the public that he 
requii'ed an escort of one hundred policemen in order to reach his 
home in safety at the conclusion of the meeting. A petition went 
forth to Congress signed by twenty-two thousand citizens of Boston, 
praying for such concessions as should accommodate the differences 
between the sections. Charles Francis Adams and Henry Ward 
Beecher were swept off their feet. The municipal elections held 
throughout New England in December went overwhelmingly against 
the Republican Party. 

Similar conditions obtained in the state of New York. By far the 
most influential Republican paper in the Union was the New York 
Tribune. On tlie sixteenth of November it came out with an editorial 
entitlefl "Erring Sisters, Depart in Peace." In this editorial Horace 
Greeley contended that the Southern states should be permitted 
peaceably to secede. The New York Times, the New York Courier 
and Inquirer, lioth of tbein free soil i)apers, substantially concurred 
in the editorial policy of the Tribune. The Albany Evening Journal 
was the most influential Repul)lican paper in the up-state country 
and it took the same position. Forty thousand citizens of New York 
City petitioned for the adoption of the Crittenden compromise or 
some similar measure. The great financiers of that day, such men 
as August Belmont, Hamilton Fish and Mo.ses H. Grinuell. were 
strongly in favor of compromise. 

George William Curtis advertised a meeting to be held in Phila- 
delphia on the tenth of December at which he was to speak on "The 
Policy of Honesty." The condition of public opinion was so threaten- 



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ing that the owuer of the hall canceled the engagement and the 
meeting was perforce abandoned. On the thirteenth of December, 
Mr. Henry, the Republican mayor of Philadelphia, presided at a 
great mass meeting in Independence Square at which resolutions 
were passed demanding such concessions to the slave states as 
would avert civil war. 

Similar conditions obtained in the West. The Ohio legislature 
proposed amendments to the Constitution guaranteeing to slavery 
part of the territories. The Indianapolis Journal was the leading 
Republican paper of Indiana. A year or two later it was destined 
to render yeoman service in holding up the hands of President 
Lincoln. It now advocated the policy of concession or compromise. 
The Detroit Free Press declared editorially that if an army 
was sent South to subdue the seceding states it would be met with 
a fire from the rear which would accelerate its movements. 

All in all. the situation was the most ominous and critical which 
the country had encountered since the winter of Valley Forge. 
Throughout this terrible winter Mr. Lincoln's head remained cool. 
his faith firm, and his courage unshaken. On the eleventh of 
December he wrote Mr. Kellogg, the Illinois member of the Com- 
mittee of Thirty-three on the crisis, as follows: 

"FiUtertaiu no proposition for a compromise in regard to the 
extension of slavery. The instant you do they have us under again ; 
all our labor is lost, and sooner or later must be done over. The 
tug has to come, and better now than later." 

On the thirteenth of December he wrote Elihu B. Washburne, 
a member of Congress from Illinois, as follows: 

"Prevent as far as possible any of our friends from demoralizing 
themselves and their cause l>y entertaining propositions for com- 
promise of any sort on slavery extension. * * * On that point 
hold firm as a chain of steel." 

On the fifteenth of December he wrote John A. Gilmer of North 
Carolina as follows : 

"On the territorial question I am inflexible. On that there is 
a difference between you and us, and it is the only substantial 
difference. You think that slavery is right and should be extended ; 
we think it is wrong and should be restricted. For this cause 
neither side has any occasion to be angry with the other." 

On the twenty-second of December the New York Tribune 
announced editorially as follows: 

"We are enalded to state in the most positive terms that Mr. 
Lincoln is utterly opposed to any concession or compromise that 
shall yield one iota of the position occupied by the Republican Party 
on the subject of slavery in the territories, and that he stands now 
as he stood in May last, when he accepted the nomination for the 
Presidency, square' upon the Chicago platform." 



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On the twenty-third of December an Associated Press dispatch 
went out from Washington as follows : 

"The reported recent declaration of the President-elect, that he 
will strictly adhere to the Chica;j;o platform, has confirmed the 
waveriiij; Repulilicans to that policy, and increased the intensity 
of Southern feeling." 

It is clear that the position of the Republicans in Congress on 
the Crittenden compromise was controlled by the attitude of the 
President-elect. All American history demonstrates the prestige 
and power of the President-elect in the four months Intervening 
between his election and his inauguratittn. Mr. James Ford Rhodes, 
in his scholarly history of those times, demonstrates convincingly 
that if the Republicans had accepted the Crittenden compromise in 
I)eceml)er it would have been accepted also by the pro-slavery 
leaders. It was defeated by the refusal of the Republicans to 
recede from the free soil principle on which they had carried the 
presidential election. Mr. Rhodes adds that few historical proba- 
bilities have better evidence to support them than tluit which asserts 
that the acceptance of the Crittenden compromise in December 
would have prevented the secession of the Southern states other 
than South Carolina, and would have averted civil war in 1861. 
It was due to Mr. Lincoln, standing erect and undaunted in this 
storm of public opinion, that the free soil cause was protected from 
betrayal by an ignoble compromise. 

Mr. Lincoln was not blind to that w^hich other men saw. On 
the contrary, he knew the people better than any other man of his 
time. More clearly than anyone else he sensed the present and 
read the future. He saw that the timidity and irresolution which 
alarmed other men were but waves on the surface of ]»ublic opinion, 
and that beneath them the gulf stream of patriotism was running, 
deep and strong. He closed his first inaugural with these prophetic 
words : 

"The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield, 
and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone all over 
this broad land, will yet swell tlie chorus of the Union when again 
touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature." 

Lincoln was as the young man in the days of Elisha. whose eyes 
had been touched that he might see the mountain full of fiery 
horses and chariots of the Lord. In his mind's eye Lincoln saw 
Grant, Sherman. Sheridan. Thomas and the Crand Army of the 
Republic, ready to spring to iirms when the signal gun shoiild fire 
on Sumter. If he saw Bull Run and Chancellorsville he also saw 
Gettysburg and Appomattox. jukI in the strength of that vision he 
was brave to stand alone, 

Thiuik God for this brave, virile son of the prairies and for his 
stout heart in the hour of trial. The coiuitry had come to the 



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parting of the ways. Concession to the slave power had already 
been carrie<l too far. To carry it further would have been to break 
the spirit of the North. Phillips and Garrison had spoken ; Harriet 
Beecher Stowe had written ; John Brown had died ; Andrew, Curtin, 
Morton and the other great war governors were taking their seats. 
"God had soundetl forth the trumpet which should never call retreat, 
He was sifting out the hearts of men before His Judgment seat," 
and if at a time like that the men of the North had faltered they 
had been as those weighed in the balances and found wanting. 

Lincoln found the people divided in political allegiance, differing 
in their views of slavery and constitutional interpretation, enamored 
with peace at any price. Yet in this people he evoked a faith which 
remained firm during four dark years, which was proof against 
repeated disaster and which bore fruit in billions of treasure and 
more than two and a half millions of enlistments. At the inception 
of his career the word "abolitionist" was a term of opprobrium and 
those who preached the holy gospel of the freedom of man lived 
in fear of their lives. Lincoln so moulded and letl public opinion 
that the country sustained his emancipation proclamation and it 
was given him to wipe out the most gigantic evil which ever afflicted 
the western world. So long as the memory of those times shall 
endure, the story of his brave, manful life will go ringing down 
the ages to inspire and uplift, and to vindicate to men now unborn 
the free institutions of the country he loved and served. 



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